Did then-presidential candidate Joe Biden claim that the biggest problem during the Revolutionary War was the fact that they did not have airports? No, that's not true: Biden was referring to something then-President Donald Trump had said in a speech. The Facebook video where this claim originated is misrepresenting Biden's speech by leaving out the context.
The claim appeared on Facebook (archived here) where it was published on April 13, 2023. It opened with Biden behind a podium, speaking loudly into a microphone. He says:
The biggest problem we had in the Revolutionary War is we didn't have enough airports
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Apr 17 15:18:31 2023 UTC)
This video is taken from a 2020 campaign rally when Biden was running for president. Toward the end of his speech, he started criticizing Trump's actions as a leader. Here are a few sentences before the quote heard in the Facebook video:
Donald Trump, when he thinks climate change, he says hoax. Well, guess what? Speaking of hoaxes, remember what he said about the increasing violent hurricanes and the frequency? He actually said, maybe we should detonate a nuclear bomb over the Atlantic. By the way, the same stable genius that said the biggest problem we had in the Revolutionary War is we didn't have enough airports.
The full transcript of the 2020 Biden speech can be found here.
More Lead Stories fact checks about Biden can be found here.
